Photo Mechanic 4.5 Public Beta for Mac OS X and Windows

[straightpipes]

Kirk
Thank you for this great update.  One thing I noticed on the beta 4.5 is when I drag the program to the 2nd screen it jumps over to the right edge and partially on to the the other screen.  I can get the browser to stay on the 2nd screen sometimes but any moving of it makes it jump to the edge.  When I open any menu item it alway jumps to the initial screen.  I know this has happen in other versions and was fixed immediately.
I am running os 10.4.9 on a dual 1000 G4 with a 22 and 23 inch apple screen.
Cheers
Jon

[Kirk Baker]

Jon,

Thank you for this great update.  One thing I noticed on the beta 4.5 is when I drag the program to the 2nd screen it jumps over to the right edge and partially on to the the other screen.  I can get the browser to stay on the 2nd screen sometimes but any moving of it makes it jump to the edge.  When I open any menu item it alway jumps to the initial screen.  I know this has happen in other versions and was fixed immediately.
I am running os 10.4.9 on a dual 1000 G4 with a 22 and 23 inch apple screen.

I think you may have posted this twice.  We're looking into it.  I only have one monitor so I'm getting one of the other team members to try this out.  I'll let you know what we find out.

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

BUG found: Closing Navigator crashes PM (Beta r.0319)

Windows XP SP2, Athlon.

When closing Navigator pane (which opened just fine previously), either from menu or by clicking the little "x", whole PM exits ungracefuly. PMCrashReporter doesn't start up though, and no crashlog is generated on hdd AFAIK.
Favourites pane doesn't exhibit this bug.

I closed/reopened the Navigator about a dozen times in a row without incident.  Did you uninstall 4.4.3.3 and then install 4.5 beta?

-Kirk

[straightpipes]

Thanks Kirk
I first posted in the wrong thread and thought it would not be seen.
Sorry

[Kirk Baker]

Sam,

How do you toggle between tabs using the keyboard shortcut?
When toggling between contact sheets in 4.4 I can use command/-~ buttons, which works great.
That doesn't work with the beta.

I was going to ask how you can switch between tabs on the keyboard too.  Any chance it could be (on a Mac) Command-Shift-[ or -] to move to the previous or next tab, to match Safari?

I just added this in my development version.  Command-{ and Command-} do Previous/Next Tab.

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

Thanks Kirk
I first posted in the wrong thread and thought it would not be seen.

I see all...

-Kirk

[jimb]

Some initial observations for Ver 4.5 running on Win XP SP2 MCE, Athlon 64 X2 4600 2gb RAM:

Bugs?:
1. In the contact sheet, the full path/filename is not displayed; it appears only the leftmost 67 characters are shown, the rest is truncated.
2. In the preview window filmstrip, for a selected photo with no color class assigned it shows the selected background color rather than the "None" color. In my case, this is the same color as #8-Trash, leading to obvious confusion.

Not exactly bugs, but...
3. One of the things I liked about PM is that it didn't junk up my photo directories with various .dat files and the like. This has changed with this version since I am getting ".pmarrangement.dat" files showing up, even though I haven't actually "made an arrangement". It looks like the file is created anytime the "Make Arrangement" menu selection is clicked, even if the order isn't rearranged. It's also created when you actually rearrange thumbnails, which is expected. Can the creation of this file be limited to when an actual arrangement is made? What is the purpose of the menu item? It appears you can rearrange at any time by simply dragging a thumbnail to its new location without clicking the menu item.
4. The new arrangement of the IPTC layout moved some frequently used fields down the page, forcing a click/scroll to access the fields. The fields are "Photographer" through "Copyright URL". I notice some new XMP-only fields have been added further up the list. Can they be swapped with the ones I mentioned? This would prevent unncecessary scrolling (the mouse wheel doesn't work in this dialog), which affects productivity. Or maybe this--the problem doesn't appear on the stationary pad since two columns are used. Can this be adapted to the IPTC Info window?

MIA Features
5. The ability to choose a selected block of images during an ingest operation is becoming more frequent as card capacity increases. Its easy to have 2 or more seperate shoots on a single card. Currently there is no convenient method to ingest a subset of the images on a card; the whole card must be ingested, and reprocessed for each different shoot. Is this feature (which was addressed under "Feature Requests" on this forum) present? If not, will it be included at some point?

Thanks for the many new features in the release.

[dbrouse]

Currently there is no convenient method to ingest a subset of the images on a card; the whole card must be ingested, and reprocessed for each different shoot.

I separate my shoots/scenes "in camera" by creating folders in the camera. You CAN ingest folders and this helps me, especially with larger capacity cards/shoots. Will this help you? 

Delane

[Taisei]

Taisei,

Copied files become invisible in Finder.

I copied a couple of images from folder A to folder B. They were successfully copied and you can browse them with Photo Mechanic.
But when you open the folder B, no file is visble.  I checked the folder with a File System Browser that shows invisible files and found the images.

I renamed the copied images (invisible in the Finder) with PM, it became visible.

It happens only on my Mac (10.3.9), doesn't happen to my colleague's Mac (10.4).
Do you have any idea?

No idea, but I'll look into the issue and try to fix it before the final 4.5 version.  How did you do the copy?  Via drag and drop?  With the Copy dialog?

-Kirk

I copied with the dialog.
Control Key+click thumnail/Copy Photo

Taisei

[jimb]

Currently there is no convenient method to ingest a subset of the images on a card; the whole card must be ingested, and reprocessed for each different shoot.

I separate my shoots/scenes "in camera" by creating folders in the camera. You CAN ingest folders and this helps me, especially with larger capacity cards/shoots. Will this help you? 

Delane

Delane,
Thanks. Using folders does help, when I remember to create a new one. In the hectic real world of photography, it's easy to forget to do that. I sometimes even add images to an unformatted card, and realize it long after I've added many new images. Forgetful, yes. But it happens. I feel this is a restriction in PM that doesn't exist in other downloader/ingest products that have this capability.

Sure, there are ways to circumvent the restriction, but I'd rather the software didn't force me into working around it. PM prides itself in providing a highly productive application to make our job easier. This is an area where I feel it comes up a little short.

[Kirk Baker]

Jim,

Currently there is no convenient method to ingest a subset of the images on a card; the whole card must be ingested, and reprocessed for each different shoot.

I separate my shoots/scenes "in camera" by creating folders in the camera. You CAN ingest folders and this helps me, especially with larger capacity cards/shoots. Will this help you? 

Delane

Delane,
Thanks. Using folders does help, when I remember to create a new one. In the hectic real world of photography, it's easy to forget to do that. I sometimes even add images to an unformatted card, and realize it long after I've added many new images. Forgetful, yes. But it happens. I feel this is a restriction in PM that doesn't exist in other downloader/ingest products that have this capability.

Sure, there are ways to circumvent the restriction, but I'd rather the software didn't force me into working around it. PM prides itself in providing a highly productive application to make our job easier. This is an area where I feel it comes up a little short.

The feature you're asking about was planned for the initial release of 4.5.  But we just ran out of time.  I think the 4.5 update is a significant update even without an Ingest from selection feature.  I don't think it is worth holding up the release date for this feature.  I plan to get that feature into 4.5 in an early point release.

I hope everyone understands that if your requested feature was not included in the beta that it doesn't mean we won't add your feature.  We just can't keep on working on 4.5.0 and never release it.  We have a very public development process and I think most of our customers really appreciate it being this way.

-Kirk

[rsorbo]

Sam,

How do you toggle between tabs using the keyboard shortcut?
When toggling between contact sheets in 4.4 I can use command/-~ buttons, which works great.
That doesn't work with the beta.

I was going to ask how you can switch between tabs on the keyboard too.  Any chance it could be (on a Mac) Command-Shift-[ or -] to move to the previous or next tab, to match Safari?

I just added this in my development version.  Command-{ and Command-} do Previous/Next Tab.

-Kirk

Hi Kirk:

I imagine this isn't doable, but I use my left hand for switching between screens or programs and I would like to be able to do that for tabs too. Can you make command ~button do the same in PM?
Thanks,

Rob

[Kirk Baker]

Rob,

How do you toggle between tabs using the keyboard shortcut?
When toggling between contact sheets in 4.4 I can use command/-~ buttons, which works great.
That doesn't work with the beta.

I was going to ask how you can switch between tabs on the keyboard too.  Any chance it could be (on a Mac) Command-Shift-[ or -] to move to the previous or next tab, to match Safari?

I just added this in my development version.  Command-{ and Command-} do Previous/Next Tab.

I imagine this isn't doable, but I use my left hand for switching between screens or programs and I would like to be able to do that for tabs too. Can you make command ~button do the same in PM?

Command-~ switches between top-level windows.  To have it cycle through tabs instead would be very non-standard.

-Kirk

[Giles]

Is there a list of any updated shortcut keys?

In particular, can I apply a star rating using the keyboard and not the mouse?  I'm sure this is simple but I can't seem to locate anything...

Giles

[FVlcek]

I closed/reopened the Navigator about a dozen times in a row without incident.  Did you uninstall 4.4.3.3 and then install 4.5 beta?
-Kirk

No, I didn't try uninstall 4.4.3.3. first... There is one problem - both Beta and normal 4.4.3.3. share the same uninstall name under windows (you should change the uninstall package name to PM Beta please). Nevertheless, I managed to uninstall both, and clean installed Beta, but the problem persists. Might be my somewhat tweaked windows installation, I will try more later today. Thanks Frantisek